![]() It would also prove their value in the eyes of the nation at large. Soldiering in defense of the Union would provide black men with an ennobling sense of dignity and self-worth. “The speediest way open to us to manhood, equal rights and elevation, is this service,” he declared later in the war. Frederick Douglass, perhaps the leading proponent of black enlistment, framed the endeavor in terms of masculine glory. The time had come, they implied, to redress this wrong.īlack proponents of military service, most of them men, made their cases in deeply gendered terms. The current generation would “create anew our claim upon the justice and honor of the Republic,” reminding the nation that African Americans had fought for its freedom from the very beginning, with little recognition and reward for their patriotism. Green noted in May 1861, African Americans would follow the examples of their forefathers who had fought in the Revolutionary War and War of 1812. By enlisting, the prominent black Philadelphian Alfred M. Through martial prowess, blacks hoped to prove to the skeptical, prejudiced white majority that they were worthy for inclusion into the American polity as free and equal citizens. As historians have discussed at length, African Americans viewed military service as a means to citizenship and equality. Only through their strenuous efforts, alongside the exigencies and political calculations of the larger conflict, did their dream of military service eventually become a reality.įrom the start of the Civil War, many black abolitionists clamored for the Union military to allow African Americans into its ranks. Over the first two years of the war, African American abolitionists fought an uphill battle against a reluctant Lincoln administration and a prejudiced Northern public to allow black enlistment. Learn more about Frederick Douglass: Prophet of Freedom.When the Civil War began in April 1861, it was far from a foregone conclusion that Albemarle County natives like Jesse Cowles and Mathew Gardner would end up serving in the Union military. ![]() While the Center’s primary focus has been on scholarly research, it also seeks to bridge the divide between scholarship and public knowledge by opening channels of communication between the scholarly community and the wider public. ![]() The GLC strives to make a vital contribution to the understanding of slavery and its role in the development of the modern world. The Gilder Lehrman Center (GLC) for the Study of Slavery, Resistance, and Abolition is supported by the Whitney and Betty MacMillan Center for International and Area Studies at Yale. It was also selected as a New York Times, Wall Street Journal and Time Top 10 Book of the Year. He has worked on Douglass much of his professional life, and been awarded the Bancroft Prize, the Abraham Lincoln Prize, and the Frederick Douglass Prize, among others. Professor Blight is the author or editor of a dozen books, including American Oracle: The Civil War in the Civil Rights Era and Race and Reunion: The Civil War in American Memory and annotated editions of Douglass’s first two autobiographies. There has not been a major biography of Douglass in a quarter century. Douglass was not only an astonishing man of words, but a thinker steeped in Biblical story and theology. Blight tells the story of Douglass’s two marriages and his complex extended family. In the biography, Professor Blight has drawn on new information held in a private collection that few other historians have consulted, as well as recently discovered issues of Douglass’s newspapers. Titled Frederick Douglass: Prophet of Freedom, Blight’s book was lauded for being “a breathtaking history that demonstrates the scope of Frederick Douglass’ influence through deep research on his writings, his intellectual evolution and his relationships.” (Watch Blight’s interview about his book) Blight, Class of 1954 Professor of American History and director of the Gilder Lehrman Center for the Study of Slavery, Resistance, and Abolition was awarded a 2019 Pulitzer Prize in the history category for his new biography on Frederick Douglass, the escaped slave who became a prominent activist, author, and public speaker.
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